This paper analyzes the institutional setup of major league sports. In particular, it looks at reasons for the organization of leagues as cooperatives of team-owners, the specific employment relation of a commissioner as enforcement mechanism for rules of the league, and the centralized...

Zu den Funktionen, die Unternehmensberatungen für ihre Klienten erfüllen können, wird in der Literatur auch die sogenannte Legitimationsfunktion gezählt. Demzufolge können Manager Unternehmensberatungen auch dazu nutzen, sich gegenüber ihren Vorgesetzten oder den Eigentümern der...

Auf dem Markt für Informationen über feine Weine konnte sich Robert M. Parker eine dominante Stellung als sogenannter Weinkritiker aufbauen. Der vorgelegte Beitrag hat zum Ziel, die ökonomischen Mechanismen und „Geschäftsmodelle“ offen zu legen, die hinter Parkers Erfolg als Weinkritiker...

The analysis focuses on the basic institutional mechanisms governing open source software development. It explains why these institu-tional mechanisms enable rent-seeking without crowding out donative behavior. The “symbiotic” institutional arrangements translate into an ability to attract...

There is an on-going debate about the optimal degree of team solidarity in professional European soccer leagues. Support for a high degree of team solidarity has been coming from the theory of competitive balance, which states that diminished uncertainty of outcome will result in reduced...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of nationalvariety within a team on team performance. Due to ãlanguage incompatibilityÒ, the teamÕs corresponding productivity should be expected to decrease with the number of nationalities, as misunderstandings would occur more often. On...

In spite of Microsoft’s quasi monopoly position in the market for operating systems Linux has succeeded to become a serious competitor of Microsoft Windows. From an economic standpoint this fact raises some puzzles. In this paper we focus on the development and production of a complex team...

Software developed and produced in open source projects has become an important competitor in the software industry. Since it can be downloaded for free and no wages are paid to developers, the open source endeavor seems to rest on voluntary contributions by hobbyists. In the discussion of this...

This paper outlines how the theory of contests is applied to professional team sports leagues. In the first part, we present the traditional Tullock contest and explain some basic properties of the equilibrium. We will then extend this RePEc/iso contest to a two-period model in order to analyze...